New Bird to science – News from Birdlife International

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White-eyes - Birdlife International

There has been a new bird to science discovered on the Soloman Islands. The Vanikoro White-eye. As with the Galapagos (where I was lucky enough to travel last year with Sunrise) the Soloman archipelago has a host of bird species that have evolved (in this case from white-eyes, in the Galapagos from finches) to fill niches that might otherwise be filled by competitors. You can read much more on this exciting find on the Birdlife International website (here). From the report it appears that white-eyes seem to evolve particularly rapidly to create new species which probably partially explains the numbers of seperate species to be found on the Solomans. Pretty cool.